Collect & Connect Multi-User Interactive Table

Collect & Connect Multi-User Interactive Table

Concept, design, and production of a multi-user interactive table game for the Taku Tāmaki – Auckland Stories Exhibition.

We worked closely with the Auckland War Memorial Museum team to develop a multi-user, physical-digital interactive experience for a 9 to 12 year old target audience.

The final solution is a treasure hunt-like game where visitors are tasked with being ‘curators’ to hunt down objects related to a particular topic. Through use of written clues, colour coding and iconography, visitors move around the table using their own physical game piece as their main interaction. This piece takes the form of an abstract Sherlock Holmes-like, 3D printed model. The models have tracking markers on their undersides which get tracked via infrared cameras mounted in the table screen hardware. User interface displays and abstract styled game graphics react with these models as the visitor moves around the table utilising a front-facing radar scope to see otherwise hidden moving objects. Additionally, visitors can use a separate set of physical museum ‘department’ models to help them find the object they are after.

The overall premise of the game is to find the correct set of objects as fast as you can to get a daily time rank. However, the endpoint of each game enables the visitor to interact with the objects they have collected. Each object is an actual record of something held within the museum’s digital collection, so there is an associated image and written description.

While the game is an abstract, fun, and collaborative free-for-all, conceptually the underlying theme introduces visitors to the way museums collect, curate, and view data.

The Collect and Connect game is an example of a physical-digital museum experience at the leading edge of creative technologies. It cleverly brings together a combination of approaches in infrared camera tracking and multi-touch screen hardware, 3D printed and printed solutions, data driven and client-managed content, and a modern games engine development platform.